


I knew you must be edified by the margent ere you had done.

by angevin2, MarnaNightingale



Series: With No Less Terror Than The Elements [2]
Category: Meta - Fandom, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 19:25:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2080239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angevin2/pseuds/angevin2, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarnaNightingale/pseuds/MarnaNightingale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Extensive, extended "DVD Commentary" for <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/2080236">With No Less Terror Than the Elements: notes toward uncovering Act IV, Scene ii of Richard II</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	I knew you must be edified by the margent ere you had done.

**Author's Note:**

> There are no particular warnings for this, but if you have concerns about triggering content reading the warnings for the fic is advisable as the entire text of the fic - alongside extended discussion of same - is reproduced in this commentary.

Longtime readers of [](http://shaksper-random.livejournal.com/profile)[**shaksper_random**](http://shaksper-random.livejournal.com/) might recall that back in January we posted ["With No Less Terror Than the Elements,"](http://community.livejournal.com/shaksper_random/7157.html) which is, as far as we can tell, the only Richard/Bolingbroke slashfic in existence (a fact we are inordinately proud of, if a bit puzzled by, but none of the Shakeslashers seem to do much with the histories. Pity, that, as there's a _lot_ of slashiness in the histories).

Anyway, there is, as you're probably aware, sort of a trend within fandom to do "DVD commentaries" on fics, which is one I've always liked, since writing-process-meta is a Good Thing. We thought it would be really interesting to try it for this fic, so, here we are. As it turns out, the commentary ended up being about four times as long as the actual fic, because there is a lot going on in it, and we are well-educated, occasionally pretentious, and completely unable to shut up about _Richard II._

I think it is fair, too, to remind you that there is much in the fic that is disturbing. And naturally there is considerably more of the same in the commentary. I mean, it's Richard/Bolingbroke, post-deposition, which says pretty much everything you need to know on that score.

And, for the record, since the connection to the usernames is not at all obvious:  
MRN: [](http://commodorified.livejournal.com/profile)[**commodorified**](http://commodorified.livejournal.com/)  
LLF: [](http://angevin2.livejournal.com/profile)[**angevin2**](http://angevin2.livejournal.com/)

* * *

  


  
Richard II: _The cleanest play by Shakespeare and, by any standard whatsoever, a remarkably chaste one.*_  
*There is only one sexual reference worth the mention: 'My brain I'll prove the female to my soul, My soul the father, and these two beget A generation of still-breeding thoughts' (V v 6-8). This beats Tennyson's historical dramas for purity!  
\-- Eric Partridge, Shakespeare's Bawdy

_That even minor details of the play continue to absorb my attention will be obvious to readers of the commentary, which may be accused, I fear, of threatening at times to overwhelm the text it was written to serve.  
\-- Charles R. Forker, in the preface to the third Arden edition of_ Richard II

  
MRN: Ok, so first we babble about why did we write this? 

LLF: This sounds like a good idea. Let me go start some tea.

MRN: OK, so. The Sam [West] factor. 

LLF: The Sam factor! And the fact that it turns out it's really really easy to turn the character dynamic the play puts forth into slash anyway.

MRN: Sam, Richard II, and Henry V. [Harfleur](http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/henryv/henryv.3.3.html). For me that was the trigger, because I had to hear the two roles played by the same person before the connections started to happen.

LLF: Yeah. I think we probably can -- I would love to hear what he has to say about Henry V, definitely. I mean, I got more overlap between his Richard II and Henry V than I did with Michael Pennington doing both roles in the same tetralogy. Did I tell you that when E. read this she thought we were channeling Jacobi? He probably did get in there by indirect crooked ways -- his performance was very influential to my conception of the character. The one thing Jacobi says about Richard that's always really stayed with me is something about Richard's thespiness: "The emotions are genuine, but he can turn it on".

MRN: And Sam sexualises the roles. Explicitly: 

"What crystallized this movement and made it active was the realization that in giving in, like all good 'Sub-Dom' relationships, the submissive is taking charge. By saying 'you can't sack me, I resign,' Richard regains the moral high ground, and willingly looks forward to handing over a crown which only he knows is poisoned."

and it's a very dark and subterranean sexuality in _Richard II_ and through most of _Henry V._ But it's there. And Harfleur plays into that because of how he sexualises that.

And Shakespeare sexualises it. Everything in this play is one little nudge from filthy. And it's all about how that is menacing. Sexuality -- BEING sexualised -- is menacing. 

LLF: (Okay, good, not just me. phew!)

MRN: I keep expecting N to say "you've got a pretty mouth, King..."

LLF: Yes. Which he does, but that's beside the point.

MRN: Except it's not beside the point. It actually IS the point. Because they keep trying to defeat Richard by making him a Girl. 

LLF: "For do we must what force will have us do..."

MRN: ... And you will wake up screaming for it, bitch, long after I am bones. Yes. Because Richard is completely willing to use and subvert that. Any way he can. And that's where I love Sam's version. Because usually where Richard = sexual, it means Richard = weak. This is really a very feminist Richard. 

LLF: Oh, hell yes. Which I love. And because I can't help but flog my performance-history knowledge all over the place, I am now thinking about Fiona Shaw and how her Richard II seemed to be constantly struggling against the whole "Richard-as-feminine-ergo-weak" thing. She mostly seemed to deal with it by...well. I've read comments by Shaw and Deborah Warner about how Richard in that production was sort of asexual, but if they were going for that it didn't work because it's in the text, and...damn, this is a mess, isn't it?

MRN: Yeah. Because if you de-sex Richard you don't just un-woman him, you un-man him, and then you have all these guys bullying an out of control child in a very sexual way, and ... ew. If he isn't a man, so much of what he does doesn't matter, because _Richard II_ is about constructing manhood as part of kinghood.

LLF: YES. And then, too, most of the other characters try to dismiss him as childish or whatever -- you know, Northumberland has that line about him being "basely led by flatterers" and there's this stress laid throughout on his youth (though historically he and Henry are the same age) -- some of which is drawn from the 14th/15th-c chronicles, and it has about the same propagandistic force. (I realize I am sort of tying manhood to autonomy, but that's sort of in keeping with the norms of the culture.) 

MRN: This is the world's most overdetermined blowjob.

LLF: *laughs* Everything where royalty is involved is overdetermined.

MRN: And then there's the gender of countries. France is she, in Shakespeare. So is England. And they're in these complex sexualised relationships with Kings and Queens. 

LLF: Well, in _Richard II_ you have some weird gender issues with England, there, if you look at, e.g., Gaunt's speech: England is a nurse (same image Bolingbroke has already used, of course) and a "teeming womb of royal kings" but also a "seat of Mars" and a fortress. And a "sceptred isle," which, let's face it, is pretty phallic. And the subjects are a "happy breed of men." (Which is especially interesting when you juxtapose it with Salisbury's line about how the resistance includes boys and women and old men and all sorts of people who are not normatively masculine. hrm.) Or Richard's return -- where he's imagining himself as maternal and England as his child.

MRN: More Sam, what was that stage direction he mentions? About Richard returning from Ireland? "Welcome back, while you were gone they raped your daughter" or WTTE. 

LLF: Bolingbroke is much more conventional: when he leaves England he apostrophizes it as "my mother and my nurse that bears me yet." 

MRN: So if England is she and the fight for the land of France is sexual, then the fight for the crown of England is sexual. And that undertone of rape comes up. so much: at Harfleur it's laid out. Open your -- gates, -- or we'll take it. Which fucks up the Henry/Katherine scene later no end, because it's still operating, no matter how hidden.

LLF: Especially during the confrontation at Flint Castle, that whole speech he makes -- what with crimson tempests bedrenching laps and staining the complexion of maid-pale peaces and whatnot.

MRN: Especially the laps, because, ok, lapful of blood. Hello rape imagery. 

LLF: They cut most of that, I recall, when Fiona Shaw played Richard. Which weirded me right the hell out. _Richard II_ is also weirdly full of pregnancy/childbearing imagery and I think it plays into that, too. Last time I sat down and reread it I saw it practically everywhere.

MRN: Oh. Pieta! An empty-armed Pieta. There's that image too.

LLF: Oooh, yes! And it ties into all the Christ-imagery you get, which is mostly Richard being calculating but because he's the king there's always something to it. So you have this whole nexus of issues that are really strongly gendered in a violent sort of way.

MRN: And Shakespeare SKATES over sexualising THAT. You know, you can't QUITE prove it, but. Man that was one pure minded censor. Sex, blood, God all over the place and they cut the deposition scene? There's a feminist critique running in this fic too. I mean, this whole play is OBSESSED with whether or not Richard takes it. Cause, you know, if he does, then that's supposed to be some kind of commentary on his fitness to rule (see Elizabeth I implications).

LLF: Yeah. Marlowe gets into this too, of course.

MRN: He really does. 

LLF: Heh, one of the comments on my analysis of the Goodhall version -- hold on. [](http://likeadeuce.livejournal.com/profile)[**likeadeuce**](http://likeadeuce.livejournal.com/) , on the adaptation's homoeroticism: "So it's not that Goodhall thought Richard was too gay in the original -- it's that he clearly thought it needed to be demonstrated that Richard was a top."

MRN: And those are not dissimilar sentiments. 

LLF: Indeed!

MRN: And really, if slash has a claim on some feminist ground it's women taking on that whole obsession: ok, so WHAT IF HE DOES TAKE IT? And I'm being quite willfully crude here. You know, this piece on one level is all about ok, Richard II? Takes it on his fucking knees and likes it and what about it?

**With No Less Terror Than the Elements: notes toward uncovering Act IV, Scene ii of _Richard II_**

MRN: "No less terror than the elements" is quoting Henry --

"Methinks King Richard and myself should meet  
With no less terror than the elements  
Of fire and water". 

The form of the subtitle is part of the white room thing. That this is meta to start with, it's a comment on historical Richard and Shakespeare's Richard and on Richard in criticism and in performance. Which is why it's Notes **Toward** a new scene. And why it's **Uncovering** , not 'writing'. It's me saying "OK, guys, you DO know how this looks, yes? So let's just drag that anxiety out there and look at it." 

LLF: you know, too, that "elements" passage is sort of striking, too -- what Henry says right after that is "be he the fire, I'll be the yielding water." And I recall that traditionally the elements are gendered, no?

MRN: So he does! And yes they are. And water is feminine.

LLF: Yeah, and of course they switch. Especially, as is usual in this play, in the deposition scene -- like, when Richard, having likened himself to a "bucket down, unseen, and full of water," proceeds to transfer his sun imagery to Henry. And then it doesn't stick until Prince Hal picks it up later. (Either the Arden or Cambridge editor, I forget which, totally geeks out on the elemental stuff, which is probably the only reason I noticed it, although he doesn't talk about gender.)

MRN: It's uncannily prescient, despite all the push the other way. yes. 

LLF Because Richard gets way into the water imagery especially in the dep scene. 

MRN: *randomly yields*

LLF: Like a Welsh castle!

A SPANK INFERNO OF THE ROSES PRODUCTION

By **the King's Two Bawdies.**

LLF: And Kantorowicz joins the "Rolling In His Grave" Club.

_Bawdy Natural_ (Authorial Intent and Pornography): [](http://commodorified.livejournal.com/profile)[**commodorified**](http://commodorified.livejournal.com/)  
_Bawdy Politic_ (New Historicist Reading and Existential Wank): [](http://angevin2.livejournal.com/profile)[**angevin2**](http://angevin2.livejournal.com/)

LLF: This originally said "Deconstructionist Reading." Either one really fits, and I went with the one that was closer to my usual critical methodology. And I think it fits, since the whole power/sex thing is very new-historicist, in its way. But there's a lot of deconstructionism here, mostly drawn from the original text, which is so strongly focused on signifiers and signifieds and all of the weird things that happen in the space between the two of them. I mean, part of what you see going on with Richard here is -- he's finally figuring out that that gap is there, which is something he never really sees, as king.

Dramatis Personae:  
Richard of Bordeaux, sometime Richard II of England  
Henry IV, sometime Henry Bolingbroke.

Warning: The sexual content of this fic, though middling explicit at best, contains enough dirty bad wrong that both the author and the editor needed a stiff drink before, during, and after editing it. Readers familiar with the text will immediately apprehend the nature of the dynamic we propose to explore. Others are advised to read at least Act 3 Scene 3, Act 4 Scene 1, Act 5 Scene 4, and Act 5 Scene 6 before proceeding. In fact, just go read the play. It's fabulous. We'll wait for you.

LLF: I'd just like to reiterate this advice.

_And therefore, Baldwin, sith thou wilt declare_  
How princes fell, to make the living wise,  
My vicious story in no point see thou spare,  
But paint it out, that rulers may beware  
Good counsel, law, or virtue to despise.  
The Mirror for Magistrates, 5.22-6 (1559) 

LLF: _The Mirror for Magistrates_ is a collection of verse tragedies written in England in the 1550s -- in the later Middle Ages and early Renaissance there was a vogue for this sort of thing, collections of stories on the fall of great men. What you have in the _Mirror_ is a bunch of first-person narratives from English history -- originally just the Wars of the Roses, but it expanded a lot over the next fifty years -- and they all impart lessons about the art of rule. The moral of [Richard II's story](http://www.marna.ca/files/angevin2/mirror-richardii-web.htm) is that listening to flatterers is a Bad Thing, and as the _Mirror_ presents him, he's very much the willful and easily manipulated slutty little king, but William Baldwin (author of his story, as the epigraph indicates) gives him sort of a striking voice anyway, since he comes off, to me anyway, as really bitter and pissy about the whole thing, and here he says, basically, "tell them the really salacious bits!" It seemed to fit. And given our take on Richard -- to say nothing of Shakespeare's, since the play has little to do with the usual moralizing that surrounds discussion of Richard II in this period -- there's something nicely subversive about using this as an epigraph.

[lj-cut text ="and wilt thou, pupil-like/Take thy correction mildly, kiss the rod/ And fawn on rage with base humility/Which art a lion and a king of beasts?"]

MRN: Ok, I spent a while finding a cut text I liked. This one is Isabel, and it's a perfect example of how this play operates. It's menacing, it's filthy in a disturbing way, and it's got a reference to a boy (pupil) and to a beast juxtaposed. I'm not sure Isabel likes men all that much, really, barring Richard. And it's just what he DOES do, in the end. Literally in the fic, metaphorically in the play. "Kiss the rod" and all he has to do to turn that back on Henry is to refuse to be humiliated or defeated by it. And it works just... insanely well. Insanely being _le mot juste_ ; they're all quite mad by the end of the play, by normal standards, because the world is upside down. 

LLF: "Or if he is mad, 'twill not be seen in him there; there the men are as mad as he!" (That's the gravedigger in _Hamlet_ , talking about England.) And then, too, Pimlott's clinical white box is pretty evocative on those grounds, too, isn't it?

MRN: You are brilliant. I never thought of that!

LLF: That's why I'm going to get tenure someday.

Once away from the sight of the court they were gentler with him, and the chamber they led him to was high and spacious; they saw him in courteously enough, if briskly, and left him alone with his jagged thoughts.

From the window it was possible to watch the light fading over the river; he sat silent on the ledge, arms wrapped around his knees as if he were a boy again -- so soon the careful pride of a king fell away from the body when it ceased to bear a crown -- and thought of nothing.

MRN: Ok, this is Richard's only POV bit.

LLF: Yeah -- and, for some reason, it really, really works for me, for all that it's so short. Possibly I am a sucker for Richard POV because you never see it in Ricardian fiction, but.

MRN: He's waiting. He's not sure for what, but he's waiting and gathering himself up. And honestly I don't know why it works for me either and I wrote it, but it's there and the fic needs it.

LLF: Also, the fact that it ends "thought of nothing" I like since nothing is a word that comes to be really, really resonant by the end of the play -- looking ahead to Lear, I guess, like this play frequently does. You know -- "with nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased / With being nothing."

MRN: See, I never thought of that. But yeah, he's not "not thinking of anything", he's "thinking of nothing." 

LLF: Yeah. Not being on boats, as opposed to being not on boats. (No, I can't say anything that isn't allusive.)

* * *

Flatter and cozen, court and command -- Henry had not been prepared, had never had time in his headlong rush to the throne to realise how soon, how much, how inexorably it would absorb him -- he had looked for today to mark a consummation, but it was only a victory.

MRN: Consummation, fnarr, fnarr. That actually was semi-conscious. 

LLF: I thought it was entirely on purpose.

MRN: Nope, backbrain.

LLF: I win at dirty-mindedness!

MRN: You know, we're back to Henry as creature of emotion: he wants to FEEL LIKE a king. And he has no idea how that feels. He wants to feel like he's won, and Richard hasn't given him that, so he keeps chasing it. And yeah, that's sexual here.

LLF: It also, looking ahead, distinguishes him from Henry V, who pretty much realizes, I think, that he's never really going to feel right, as king. Which means V gets it on a level that IV doesn't. Also I love the characterization of Henry as very emotionally-driven -- because that gets archetyped as highly feminine, and you get readings of the play that are all "Richard feminine, Henry masculine" and all the cultural baggage that goes along with the gender dichotomy, but Shakespeare is never that simple. 

MRN: Yeah, he's emotionally driven, but not emotionally literate. He rarely seems to know what is driving him, and he's always undercutting his own motives. 

LLF: And, of course, the lack of self-knowledge is a pretty obvious parallel with Richard himself, albeit expressed differently.

Northumberland with his schemes, York with his anxious counsels, Fitzwater and Surrey, Exton -- even young Percy, as rash and simple as his father was cautious and sly -- their very presence pressed on him, and they would, he saw now, press him inexorably until he was pressed to the shape of a king. He thought he could not bear it for another day; he would bear it, he knew, until he died. In time, he would carry the burden well, might even learn to think it natural, but for now... he dismissed them all as soon as he decently might, and sent to know where Richard was bestowed. He called for wine, and set out to take it to him; a show of kindness, even generosity, could do no harm, he reasoned as he -- _they_ , rather -- this, too, he would have to accustom himself to, he saw with a sinking heart -- Henry Bolingbroke had been served; King Henry would be attended, obsequiously, assiduously -- implacably -- pursued from coronation to grave -- as they ushered him into Richard's chambers -- Richard's prison -- and all but two silent guards withdrew.

MRN: This is picking up on the idea of the throne as poisoned. And the weird sort of twin space Richard and Henry are in, because there are two crowned kings of England alive, which just does not happen. 

LLF: Well, one uncrowned king and one about-to-be-crowned king. But, yes. I think you said this to me once, during the writing of this fic -- what succession is all about really is death. 

MRN: The King is dead, God save the King. Except not, in this case. In reality, no crowned king; the actual kingship passes at the moment of death. On another level? Henry is already King. And Richard is already dead. But only he admits it. So we have this liminal space, and in liminal spaces, anything can happen. Reality gets metaphorical. The metaphorical can go real. 

LLF: "Two stars brook not their motion in one sphere..."

(I should probably stop the metadramatizing with the second tetralogy, but it's all there, dammit. ;-))

MRN: And it's all in here. :) So there's the set up. White box, stone room, this fic isn't set in real time. Same as I never talk about clothes.

LLF: Which is good, especially because we've wonkified the chronology of Act V a bit.

MRN: Well, everyone else does! Yep. This is Richard of Bordeaux and Henry IV, dressed for court, or it's two actors in 2006 in jeans, and it's all the same. 

LLF: And yet I researched fourteenth-century undergarments for this! Good thing there's not a whole lot to be found in that area.

I rather think the early reference to Exton is neat. He sometimes shows up early in productions. In the text, of course, he appears out of nowhere.

MRN: Rex ex Machina. Yes. That was unconscious, but I like it too. Foreshadowing, your key to...

Richard is dead. And he knows it. And Henry doesn't. 

LLF: Or rather, won't acknowledge it.

Richard's guards -- his guards -- guards to keep Richard in, guards to keep Richard safe, guards to keep Henry safe -- he shook his head impatiently. He had won. He had saved them all from folly and ruin at the hands of the man who stood facing him now, bowing to him with a small smile that transformed submission to studied insolence.

MRN: And maybe if he says it often enough it'll be true.

LLF: "Folly and ruin" strikes me as very Shakespearean, as a turn of phrase. I salute you. We have here, too, the start of the whole subverted-gestures thing that's all over the fic. 

MRN: This is why every Shakespeare slasher should have their own academic editor. You did lots of this, one way and another. 

"Dear cousin. I had not thought to see you again this day -- or for many days to come. The press of your affairs -- " Richard's voice trailed off and he waved toward the nearest chair -- "but sit, cousin, sit! The King never stands before his subjects1 but to make war or pronouncements, you know, and you must begin to be a King now. Sit down, my lord, I pray you sit!"

He would not; there was discomfiture enough in this meeting without having to crane his neck at Richard. "I thank you for your good counsel, but I know of your own great courtesy that it is not always so. If the King's company be made up of those for whom he hath some bond of kindness, great kindness makes small courtesy suffice; if it please you to stand, then I am content as well."

LLF: Seating arrangements...OF DOOM.

MRN: And here we have Richard submitting graciously, with the result that Henry has him right where Richard wants to be. There will be quite a lot of this, but he's testing the waters here. 

LLF: And Henry manages to set himself up to have his ass handed to him rhetorically. (I had to type "rhetorically" something like four times to make it look right.) *facepalm*

MRN: So Richard knows he can get away with more. 

He was rewarded by a small nod before Richard returned with ostentatious grace to his window -- and to the attack. "Kindness? What kindness is my gracious lord minded to offer me now? I had thought that in relieving me of all my cares and troubles2 you had done me such a turn as might suffice a man to the end of his days -- the more so as it is like to cut them so short that the slightest favour fills my cup to overflowing." He turned his face to the river, then back again before Henry could do more than open his mouth to speak. "I crave pardon, your Majesty. I had remembered myself."3

MRN: Richard on the attack. And when Henry lets him slide on this, he's already lost. Even though he doesn't know it. 

LLF: This is generally about the way of it, so far as their interactions go. (There really aren't that many in the text -- there's Flint, and the deposition, and that is pretty much all...)

MRN: Yeah, I just grabbed that and rode it like a -- like that horse Richard compares himself to. 

LLF:  
"I was not made a horse,  
And yet I bear a burden like an ass,  
Spurred, galled, and tired by jauncing Bolingbroke." 

MRN: Yeah. Which we're also subverting here. Save a horse, ride a former King. 

LLF: Wasn't that bit floated for a cut text? Or did I just mention it a lot?

MRN: It was floated.

Henry could only gape at him for a long moment, choking back anger; at length he shrugged and dropped into the chair after all. "Cousin. Richard. I -- I did not come to tax you with your state, nor to burden you with mine; that is done. I only came to see what might be added to your comfort now." He displayed the wine he held. "It is my own wine, and it was mine before, so you need not scorn to drink it with me."

MRN: He is so very whipped. 

LLF: Yes. Yes, he is.

He served it out for them, and handed one full goblet to Richard, who took it with a nod and retreated to his seat on the ledge; Henry was foolishly pleased that Richard took it without comment. When Richard finally spoke, his tone was mild, even anxious. "And what of Carlisle, my lord?"

MRN: Bit of actual plot, here. Richard's taking a breather from the pressure on Henry, and that's a good time to ask for a favour.

Henry gulped at his wine. "I cannot tell. He is no coward, no reed that bends and sways with the wind; I have need of such men, and good use for them. If they be mine. If York can prevail upon him to accept what's done..."

Richard nodded. "You'll have great need of them both; the more so if you are determined to nurture Northumberland at your breast.4 That one is any man's, and none -- unless it be his to own design. Kingmaking is a heady wine to men of his stamp; and he has a promising son."

MRN: Foreshadowing. Also, good advice, as it turns out. But also a bit of a shot at making damn sure there's distrust between Northumberland and Henry.

LLF: I still can't get over the ickiness of the "nurture Northumberland at your breast" line. Ewwwwwwww. I mean, it totally works. But ew.

MRN: Oh yes. And he's doing that to make it all sound a bit vile. To fuck with Henry.

LLF: "The love of wicked men converts to fear..." The Hotspur ref is neat too, along those lines, because in _1H4_ you get Henry's line about "even as I was then is Percy now". This after he's been wishing his son and Northumberland's had been switched at birth. Ah, filial Issues. 

MRN: I think you mentioned that while I was writing and that was one reason I put it in.

He drained his goblet and held it out to be filled. "Where is your son, come to that? I thought to see him at your side to watch how a king is made." His tone was soft, almost honeyed, but his look was sharp; a bow drawn at a venture, meant to wound. Their fragile peace had shattered again; they had never been able to hold to it, even as boys. Henry set his goblet aside, and did not see how the guard slipped forward to refill it.

MRN: Richard, you are a complete bastard. 

LLF: BITCH, PLEASE.

MRN: But it worked. 

"My son is in Oxford. Where is yours?" It was a clumsy riposte, he knew; clumsy and brutal, and Richard shrugged it off with a single raised eyebrow. He had ever been the brute, the one who sputtered and stammered under Richard's edged tongue and finally hit out, until Richard had become King, and it was deadly treason to stop his mouth so. Well, and so. Richard was king no longer, and if he had not learned it in the streets of London, nor at Westminster ... he waved to the guards.

MRN: Shutting Richard up is one of those things you can just feel Henry palpably yearning to do a lot. This is probably one of the reasons this ended up as a blowjob. 

LLF: Yeah. After all, there is only one other way to shut Richard up, and this, as it turns out, is to kill him.

MRN: And you know, Richard's doing his best to make sure even that won't do it entirely. 

LLF: And it doesn't, as it happens. I mean -- in _2H4_ you have that scene where Henry is being all insomniac and obsessive and at one point he actually starts quoting Richard directly. I've always found that a very powerful moment -- when Richard's voice comes back. 

MRN: Yeah. And that was a thing in my head while I was writing. That Richard wants to die knowing that he's going to haunt Henry forever. And he does. 

"Leave us." The younger opened his mouth to protest, but shut it sharply at a warning glance from his senior; they bowed and took their leave. Henry turned again to Richard, still sprawled at his ease on the ledge, as the door closed behind them. He rose from his chair, and had the satisfaction of seeing Richard stiffen, as if he would scuttle further into the recess, but his face was cool and mocking still; Henry gritted his teeth and held his place, even when Richard gathered himself to slip from the ledge and stood facing him, smiling as if Henry were a thickheaded boy who had at last learnt to sound the letters of his name.

LLF: And -- trying to make connections here -- this whole passage we've been on about really picks up on that same tendency in Henry, this being partly stuck in the past. 

MRN: Yeah. He's still trying to understand why Richard never loved him best. And Richard, who is just ruthless here, will absolutely use that. 

LLF: And then later on it gets really creepy and there's this sort of "revenge for _everything_ " note that sneaks into the narrative voice.

MRN: Yeah. 

"Chastisement, my most gracious lord? And from your own hand; again you flatter me far beyond my poor deserts." He came closer, head high, until he was in easy reach. Waited, no longer smiling, but tense, expectant. Henry could only stare at him, hands clenched into fists, eyes wide with baffled fury. "No?" He came closer, still moving with that queer coiled grace, and closer yet, until Henry had to crane his head back to hold his gaze; Richard's breath washed over his cheek, and still Henry said nothing, did nothing. Richard was king no more, and a prisoner, Henry's prisoner, and the guards were gone. He could strike him down, could make his clever, vicious mouth swell and bleed and pulp under his fists. The guards were gone, and even had they remained, they would have made no demur; he was King. He was King, and he could do as he pleased. And Richard knew it; it was there in the line of his shoulders and in the way he held himself, tensed for a blow, and still his eyes were full of pride and scorn.

LLF: "Queer coiled grace" is such a great phrase for Richard.

MRN: *bows* thank you. That's a Sam bit, from somewhere in the backbrain. Waking the Dead, probably.

You know, inside he's afraid. But not very.

LLF: Well, yes -- at this point he hasn't really got much to lose.

MRN: Well, he's got physical pain to lose. And I think that is frightening to him but he's in for it anyway, so he tries to control it.

LLF: Oh, I think you're entirely right. And, I mean, we see it break through a little in the fic.

MRN: You know, he's not into it. At least, I was trying really hard not to let that seep in.

LLF: Yeah.

MRN: He's not getting off on it, but Henry is. And he'll make it get Henry off to hurt him.

LLF: It's like really, really displaced S&M. Deconstructionist S&M, even! Sadism expressed via the pretense of masochism -- that is desperately screwy.

MRN: Richard is totally playing him. Because if he can give Henry a hard-on for hurting him, that TOTALLY undercuts the deposition. You know, ever after it's tainted.

LLF: Heh, he's going after his puritanism.

MRN: His puritanism and his view of himself as the nice guy.

LLF: Yeah. Or, the righteous one. You know, "touch not the Lord's anointed," and so forth.

He lifted his hand, and Richard inclined his head as if listening to music far off.5 "Well, cousin?" His voice trembled; Henry shook. Disgraced and deposed, helpless and beginning to be afraid, Richard still played the king to perfection, and would, Henry suddenly knew, to the end. "What more would you have of me ... King Henry?" His tone was all patient enquiry, as if they were debating his dinner instead of -- perhaps -- his death. It was impossible, unbearable, and Henry's hand flew up as if of its own accord and struck him.

LLF: One thing that happens here is that all of the subtextual violence in the play gets made into text here. 

MRN: Yes. All the subtext gets out to play here. I was scavenging lines all over looking for elements to pull in to this fic. It's like all of Henry's darkest dreams boiling out and becoming real, and Richard's just ruthlessly pushing the buttons. And, you know, he really does want to know: Fuck's Sake, Henry, what do you really WANT? Because whatever it is, he's going to die for it. It gives him an interest. 

Richard had staggered back at the blow, and was exploring the sudden swelling of his lip with a careful finger, but made no other sign, except to offer Henry another of those strange half-nods. "A King must needs have a heavy hand, for when his subjects grow too bold. Good, cousin. Very good. And what else?"

MRN: Mindfuck, mindfuck, mindfuck.

LLF: Really, this fic, if you get right down to it, is a series of variations on that "here, cousin, seize the crown" line, isn't it?

MRN: Yes, it really is. and Henry just can't cope with that kind of thing. He ... he's relying on his enemy to FIGHT, so he doesn't have to feel like a bully. He's nerved himself up to deal with this big bad evil corrupt king, and Richard just won't play. 

LLF: I mean, in the dep scene he has that line -- "I thought you had been willing to resign," and onstage, at that point, I'd really have him stress resign and sort of shove the crown back at Richard. 

MRN: Yeah. He's trying to shift the ground there: YOU SAID YOU WANTED IT. He really is the abusive boyfriend from Hell. And nothing is ever his fault. 

LLF: Yeah. Again, this comes up a lot in _2H4_ especially -- "that I and greatness were compelled to kiss." See, this is why I always say you can't really understand Bolingbroke until you know his entire character arc. Which is probably bad of me as a literary critic. ;) 

MRN: Yeah. He deposes Richard but he wants him to validate his power. Make it okay. Tell him he's the better man, which by all the standard signifiers he IS, and yet Richard just won't do that, and it makes him crazy. And, periodically, vicious. Henry wants to be loved and feared. Henry can hold the throne because in the end he'd rather be feared. I think Richard really gives it up when he realises he'd rather be loved.

LLF: Well, Richard _is_ feared, to a degree, is the thing. For all the good that does him. But, yeah. Also the whole need-for-validation thing -- it's another way in which Richard and Henry are two sides of a coin, I think, because Richard really has that "why don't my subjects love me?" thing going early on (I'm thinking especially of the scene where he's all pissy and jealous because they do love Henry.)

MRN: For me, it's when he realises that to keep the throne now he'll have to kill, and kill men he likes, and a lot of them, that he really surrenders. Because he can't do it, and he's angry at himself for that. He can't kill Henry. He can't kill Hal. Or Hotspur.

LLF: I think I can see this, although I hadn't thought of it in precisely those terms. (One of these days I feel the need to flesh out how the Machiavellian fear-love thing falls out between _Richard II_ and _Edward II_ \-- where it's invoked explicitly -- but not for this commentary.)

MRN: Because this is already the Most Overdetermined Blowjob Ever. 

Henry shoved him away. "I -- Christ, Richard, you -- " His hand was heavier than he knew; Richard reeled back to sprawl against the window ledge, breathing hard. He was minded to follow, to strike him again; he was King. He could do as he pleased with him, with all of them. As Richard had. Was this how it began, how it had begun for Richard? He forced his hands open, and willed himself to seem calm. "Have a care how you provoke me, cousin, for your life." They stared at each other in silence, and Henry, his heart still pounding in his chest, regretted the impulse that had brought him here; he turned away, and was brought up short by Richard's laugh.

LLF: I rather like Henry's self-knowledge moment here. Quasi-self-knowledge, whatever. You know what, your characterization of Henry always makes me think of T.H. White's line on Sir Lancelot, that he tries not to be horrible because deep down he knows he is. Of course Henry is no Lancelot, but I always think of that anyway.

MRN: I have pity for Henry. I had to find some, to write this. And now I really do. He wants so badly to be a good man and save England. 

LLF: Absolutely -- I mean, I've always seen that, and it really is wrenching. Because, like everyone else, he just keeps fucking it up.

MRN: And unlike everyone else, he can't admit it. He can't have been wrong.

LLF: Yeah. You know, almost the last thing he ever says in the entire cycle is "How I came by the crown, O God forgive, / And grant it may with thee in true peace live" -- and that's as close as he gets and there's still this terrible, I don't know, split-ness to it.

MRN: "Ok, punish me, but NOT MY SON." It hurts to hear/read that. 

LLF: It does. (You need to see the ESC version -- that's really there in Michael Cronin's performance and it kills me dead like a really dead thing.)

"For my life, cousin? But 'tis expressly yours, now, by your will and mine own voice.6 I am your prisoner, and your subject; how then should I have more care for Richard's life than Richard's king has? My crown is on your head, my scepter lies as tame in your hand as ever it did in mine, and I did not prevent. How, then, dare I strive against you now?"

LLF: And yes, the crown/scepter line is as filthy as you think it is.

MRN: Oh hell yes. It's all about the overdetermined two bodies of the king.

LLF: Like most things are.

MRN: Richard's got his hot little hands on Henry's balls, pretty much.

He was all smooth reason once more; did his lip not bleed it might never have happened, any of it, and he was standing again, coming forward; Henry took a step backwards, and checked himself at a quirk of Richard's eyebrow. A king did not give way; it hung between them as clear as if Richard had spoken, but he only said, again, "What else remains, cousin? You have me at your pleasure; would you have me at your feet? How shall I show my thanks for such strange mercy as you show Richard, when Richard and all he has to give are yours?"7 He made to fall to his knees; Henry caught him, and his eyes widened in mock-amazement, but still he waited in silence, tormenting Henry with his damnable patience as Henry struggled for words.

"I would have you -- would have had you -- at my side, Richard."

LLF: You can tell the mindfucking is really really working because that line is totally -- well, I guess we are making a lot of use of the word "overdetermined," aren't we?

MRN: Henry is lying. He means, "under his thumb, but liking it."

LLF: Yeah.

MRN: Lying to himself, really.

LLF: As per usual.

MRN: Does Henry have ANY equal relationships? I don't think he does.

LLF: Nothing's springing to mind.

MRN: Damian Lewis gets this. I remember you saying his Henry is whiny, and he really IS. But he's believably whiny.

LLF: He is, and it took a while for the performance to click for me. But I've come round. (Also, he reads as young, which startled me at first: most Bolingbrokes I've seen don't, especially.)

MRN: And yet, they are all young. And that works.

LLF: Yeah, they are -- it's only really stressed as regards Richard, though.

MRN: Heavily armed boys, running the country. It is to shudder.

LLF: And, historically, he's actually 32, but.

MRN: You know, that's young. In a way.

LLF: It is. It's not old exactly. Even in 1595 or even 1400. In 1400, it's approaching middle age -- cf. Dante's "midway along our life's journey" -- but even back then you have things like Archbishop Arundel preaching, at Henry's accession, on texts like "Woe to the land where the king is a child" and emphasizing that England will be ruled by a _man_ now.

MRN: Hmm. It's also; they've been IN THIS since they were teenagers.

LLF: Yeah.

MRN: And their reactions show that. Whole generation of men at court who got left holding the ball at 14 because Edward died. And so suddenly Richard's cohort becomes important. And here they are 15 years later, still acting out all the shit that went down.

LLF: I find it really interesting that Shakespeare only refers to that past very obliquely. Like, there's this one passing reference to the 1381 Rising. Blink and you'll miss it. But it all fits anyway, as background, and that's really intriguing. It's Henry's line in the first act -- "all the treasons for these eighteen years fetch from false Mowbray their first head and spring" -- which, if you count backwards, lands you in 1381. And it's seriously WTF because I don't know what it's doing there. One of the fun things about fic, and acting, is you can talk about this sort of thing to a degree it's hard to do in straight-up academic writing, because the textual standards are different. ;)

His voice whined in his ears; Richard caught the plaintive note and smiled sadly. "Oh, cousin. No, cousin, no; a king has no man at his side; nor at his back neither, not if he is wise. Keep your subjects on their knees, the more so when they draw near; if you would keep the crown, you must keep it well above their reach."

MRN: More advice. And as with all of Richard's comments on kingship, both right and wrong, and designed to fuck Henry over and play on his bad qualities.

LLF: Go not to slutty ex-kings for counsel, for they will say both no and yes. (And probably you shouldn't go to them for blowjobs either, even if they are good at it. More trouble than it's worth.)

MRN: And they will stab you if they can. He's absolutely pandering to Henry's brute side here.

LLF: I do think the whole advice-to-princes theme is really effective. I mean, part of it is making the subtext into text, but again, it's subversive. I mean, in a sense Richard does tend to speak in tropes, though as you say he tends to put things more brutally than, oh, I don't know, Erasmus! Machiavelli, maybe. 

MRN: Still making Henry wince, too. Henry has nicer names for all this, and Richard's not letting him have them.

This time he was quicker; he was down before Henry could move to prevent, catching up Henry's hand to examine it closely before finding and setting his lips to the tiny smear of blood on the knuckle. His breath was warm and quick, and disturbingly pleasing to feel; Henry made to pull his hand away, but Richard only tightened his grasp and looked up at him, his expression all innocent enquiry on the surface, full of knowing provocation beneath. As Henry stared down at him, Richard's tongue stole out to clean, first his swollen lip, then the knuckle that had laid it open, and Henry's breath knotted in his throat.8

MRN: Seize the crown, cousin...

LLF: There it is again, yeah.

MRN: And always luring Henry onto his own ground:

He had not meant this to happen, had not wanted -- this above all he despised in Richard, this capacity for voluptuousness and perversity9 \-- Richard's eyes were avid, drinking in his confusion, and Henry turned his head away, but his hand he left in Richard's, even when Richard's mouth strayed from his knuckle and he felt his hand turned, opened; Richard's lips were on his palm, and even the pretence of innocence was gone now; it hung in the air between them, what he was doing -- what they were -- Henry cursed him under his breath and took Richard's jaw suddenly in his other hand, wrenching his face up harshly until their eyes met once more.

MRN: And by 'despise' he means 'can't cope with.' Richard is utterly perverse, and not just sexually.

LLF: Voluptuousness and perversity! That's just fun to say. And -- yeah, about what you said.

MRN: Also, reverse voyeurism; it's Richard getting off on watching Henry here.

LLF: He's transgressive in pretty much everything. (Even, if you're reading history and not Shakespeare, his proto-absolutism -- Henry's usurpation is basically a reactionary gesture, historically. Shakespeare doesn't so much emphasize this.)

Richard's eyes were half-shut, as if he had been roused from sleep; he rocked back on his heels and waited, but kept hold still of Henry's hand, even laid his cheek along it, and in that moment Henry could half-think there was yet some scrap of love between them.

LLF: Henry is so fucked up.

MRN: Poor Henry. Such a little, little bone he's been tossed. And he falls for it.

LLF: Heh, you said "bone."

MRN: I did. :)

I forgot to talk about the Elf Knight thing. It may not matter. Well, it sorta does. Because it says something about Henry that we can see him falling for this seduction attempt. Because it's so Elf Knight, it's so ... what sane person would think that what Henry has done to Richard would make Richard want to have sex with him? But it's this very common trope, you see it with female characters all the time. And so Richard is playing with those female tropes here, invoking that sort of masochistic display.

You know, writing this was like playing one handed chess.

LLF: Dear me.

MRN: Be Richard and move. Be Henry and move. Be Richard again and move. It worked, but it was very... you know, it keeps the characters real. Otherwise you end up moving one of them to suit the agenda of the other. But the mental whiplash was considerable.

LLF: I find that this play causes it even when one is not writing filthy, filthy sex based on it. 

"You see how simple it is?" Richard's voice was husky. "Only be firm, and let men come to know thy firmness, and they will crawl to thee and lick thy hand as readily as any hound,10 and love thee all the better."

MRN: Swallow the nice poison, Henry ... this is in the play, too. And Sam's comment. Poisoned crown. Poisoned everything. Honeytraps everywhere.

LLF: Now I'm trying to remember how much imagery of poison/disease/contamination there is in the text. It's not as overwhelming as it gets later, in _2H4_ , but there's a definite thread of it. 

"We are all diseased,  
And with our surfeiting and wanton hours  
Have brought ourselves into a burning fever,  
And we must bleed for it: of which disease  
Our late King Richard, being infected, died." 

MRN: And here I go again, literalising. I mean, that's the Pox.

LLF: Pretty much! Shakespeare does go on about it.

MRN: Well, it was the AIDS of his generation. New and deadly and invisible and terrible. And I really think it's a huge metaphor in RII. So, you know, how does everyone get it from Richard, then?

LLF: Hmmmm. I suppose it is -- although I think you have to read retroactively for it to really work (because the imagery is there in the _Henry IV_ s, but not so much in _Richard_ ).

MRN: Yes, well, I am willing to be all KINDS of postmodern if it gets Richard of Bordeaux on his knees.

LLF: And that, I can agree with wholeheartedly.

MRN: It's there in _Richard_ sort of more broadly. Sex and circling contagion and death.

LLF: Margaret Healy has actually written about this recently -- I haven't read it, but I've seen refs to it. Disease imagery in _Richard II_ and _Measure for Measure._ Now that I think of it. So I suppose I should not fret excessively. I mean, as I've been saying, I can see how it works.

MRN: "Thinking of civil wars when he got me". I mean, sex is so deadly for them. And the childbirth thing gets in there too. Which you know, all those deaths in childbed.

LLF: Yeah. Certainly I have no quarrel with that -- and look at Isabel's imagery the first time she has anything substantial to say. It's all about longing and labor and monstrous births and creepy-as-fuck lines like "and Bolingbroke my sorrow's dismal heir."

He bent his head again and his lips grazed Henry's wrist; Henry gasped, and his fingers tightened on Richard's jaw, but he made no move to stop him, only stood transfixed, the blood pounding in his head until his vision blurred and Richard's head was a golden smear against his arm. At length Richard's tongue stilled and he moved to rest his head along Henry's thigh and sighed, and so bewitched in that moment was Henry that he sighed with him; Richard's calculating smirk recalled him to himself and he stiffened with revulsion. He thrust him away more roughly this time, and smiled with grim satisfaction as he went sprawling to the floor.

MRN: You know, this is the bit that drives me to drink. It may in fact be the filthiest thing I ever wrote.

LLF: What, the firmness/wrist-licking bit? It is utterly filthy. It is also dirtybadwronghot. (This has been a voyage of discovery for me, or something. ;) )

MRN: Oh good. But, yes, Henry's really buried kinks are all getting wailed on here, and he's just falling apart under it. And this is not the sort of thing he's going to get over, ever. This is real damage Richard is doing him. 

LLF: Richard, you brilliant slut. You know what else I love? It's kinkiness with a warrant from Froissart. I mean, that goes above and beyond. But, in all seriousness -- yeah.

MRN: Well, and from Shakespeare.

LLF: Yeah, but the Shakespeare part goes without saying.

MRN: Which does not save me from the gutter, but hey.

LLF: OUR FOOTNOTES ARE NOT A TICKET OUT OF THE GUTTER.

MRN: Who wants out?

LLF: There is, as it happens, a lovely view of the stars.

"Did you think me so easily tamed, cousin? I am no boy to be dazzled by a fair-seeming surface and a fawning look or to forget myself in a few perverse fondlings."

MRN: Oh shut up Henry, you're so easy I could play you left handed.

He was shaking with rage; as Richard began to gather himself to sit he kicked out at him as if Richard were in truth the dog he had named himself, but Richard dodged him easily, laughing; in a moment he was on his feet and leaning in close to whisper in Henry's ear, "Tamed, my lord? You?" He gestured largely, his hand coming to rest on Henry's shoulder as naturally as his head had found his hip moments before; he seemed unaware of it as he continued. "If there were ever a day when I might have tamed Henry Bolingbroke, that day is long gone; Henry has tamed Richard, and kennelled him, too."

MRN: Froissart. Froissart. Froissart.

LLF: Some translations of Froissart, incidentally, though not the one I footnoted, have Richard say something to the effect of "Even my dog knows which side he should be on."

It was true enough, but even when Richard had crouched so docilely at his feet the familiar, baffled feeling that Richard played him as easily as he might a psaltery had plagued him. And yet -- since Henry had come to his rooms he had resisted nothing, complained of nothing, was even now inclining his head to lay it submissively on Henry's shoulder, pressing himself to Henry's side, his meaning plain.

MRN: Richard's playing a tricky game, here. Letting Henry think he's running this fuck. Which he so is not; he's been out of control since he let Richard get his mouth on him and didn't stop it. But you know, as long as he thinks he's MAKING Richard do it.

LLF: Richard is basically the platonic ideal of topping from the bottom, isn't he?

MRN: Seize the crown...Take what you want, you know you want to. Somewhere between a pushy bottom and Mephistopheles.

LLF: And of course at this point -- and this is pretty much in the fic explicitly -- there's no excuse for saying "Not in front of the Parliament!" And yeah, I totally, totally got the Mephy-vibes here. Richard is being martyr and tempter simultaneously and that fucks Henry's shit up like nobody's business.

MRN: Oh god, yeah. "Go on, you can do ANYTHING to me. You can fuck me to death right here and nobody will ever know."

LLF: And, on that note, I need a good stiff drink. Sadly, I don't have one.

MRN: And you know, if Henry did that, Richard totally wins. Can you IMAGINE living with that? And there'd be talk.

LLF: I...would really rather not contemplate it.

MRN: Well, me either, but I did.

LLF: Point.

MRN: And Richard's kind of, 'Meh. Still better than what Edward got.' And you know, there's no real chance that Henry would do that, and Richard knows it. He KNOWS Henry. But isn't it INTERESTING that that's the bait he uses to reel Henry in? That sort of wide open appeal to his sadism?

And why not, after all? Richard's predilections were no secret to the court; even the women had gossiped and giggled behind their hands over De Vere12 and Bushy and Bagot and Green ... a nigh endless stream of pretty faces -- and arses -- that had passed through Richard's court, yawning their way through their days in the sun with satisfied smirks. If such as they had had their will of Richard, why should he deny himself?

MRN: Swallowed the bait wholesale. And really, he should know the answer to that question. He killed two of them, recently.

LLF: I still think the bit about the courtiers' arses is a very telling detail.

MRN: How so? Ah, that Henry's been looking?

LLF: Yeah, that he noticed. 

MRN: Noticed hell. The way he goes on about it when he kills B and G, he frigging whacked off to it. 

LLF: It is also a telling detail that, before he starts in on the "here's what you did to me" portion of his condemnation that's about the only thing he goes on about much.

MRN: You'd almost think HE wanted to be the one breaking Richard's bed, wouldn't you?

LLF: I am assuming this is a rhetorical question. ;)

They stood in silence for a moment; Henry lifted his hand, then dropped it irresolutely. Dear God, he had cursed and vilified -- and to say true, half-envied -- Richard's favourites for so many years and never even troubled himself to wonder what it was,13 this office that men did for one another that was such black sin? He had as good as fallen headlong into the sin already, had known as he stood mute and let Richard make free with his person what they were about; it was foolish to hesitate now over the manner of it --

MRN: All Richard has to do is wait, and Henry will sell himself on this now. He's got a hard-on, he's pissed off, he's King, there are no witnesses. And Richard's been helpfully wrapping his filthy mouth around Henry's fingers. Which was very helpful when you realise that right about here I had to deal with the fact that I was writing a very tricky sex scene in which one of the active partners has NO IDEA what he's supposed to be doing here.

"Why, cousin, what's this? You were not so careful of Richard before ... " The gentleness was gone from Richard's eyes, now, and his voice was sharp. "Or does thy conscience wake to catch at thy sleeve and turn thee craven?"

LLF: Aaaaaand it's the "seize the crown" thing again.

MRN: Yep. Henry can't pass up a dare that big. Richard's totally got him in a corner; if he backs down now he's a coward.

LLF: I think that's one of the nastiest things Richard says in the whole fic, really, because the conscience thing is so huge.

MRN: Oh yeah. You know, either way Henry loses. But one way he gets off.

LLF: Yeah. So, might as well.

MRN: And he gets to feel like he's punishing Richard.  


His hands came down on Richard's shoulders before he had time to think, and in the next moment Henry had him pinned against the wall, his hands scrabbling for purchase against the bare stone, his eyes wide. "Ah, better; that's well begun, at least, if you can only --"

MRN: Richard, aside from being pleased that things are going the way he wants, is in fact getting off on this.

LLF: Hell yes! Actually his reaction here always makes me snicker a bit -- that sort of "THAT's more like it!" thing he does. Because, you know, wallsex!

MRN: The wallsex and the hands on the stone wall, that's totally fucked up hot. But at this point for Richard, it's like gaaaaah, contact.

It was not, Henry told himself, properly speaking, a kiss at all, nor anything like one; only a convenient means of stopping Richard's damned mouth -- but Richard groaned and shivered against him and in so doing made the matter clear enough; it was a good deal closer to battle14 than to anything fit for the marriage-bed, and so, he thought, infinitely more suited to this madness. Soon enough, Richard was clutching at his shoulders, breath sobbing in his throat, and when Henry pulled away for a desperate, dragging breath Richard's eyes flicked open and there was no mockery in them, no lacerating, scornful reminder of all the ways in which Henry had since they were boys together been judged and found wanting, only honest need spiced with fear.

MRN: And now he's got to wonder what Henry's going to do to him. And he's PRETTY sure he can take it. But only pretty sure. And he got himself into this, so you know. He's going to have to stand there and take it.

LLF: It's like Flint Castle, only with sex.

MRN: It is, very much so, and that was, you will not be shocked, deliberate.

LLF: Well, considering that you not only mention that scene but quote it in the next paragraph, no, I will not be shocked.

They were not before all the world now, as they had been at Flint, or Westminster, for Henry to flinch and flatter and dissemble his victory; _I come but for mine own_ ,15 he had said, and truly he had meant it; this was not the ending he had forseen, or intended. Richard had thrust first the crown and then himself into Henry's reluctant hands, but it was done; what he had, he would hold, and enjoy, to the last. Richard had scorned his mercy too often; let him learn to value it.16 There was always something more that could be taken; even now Richard made to turn his face away, to deprive Henry of this his victory. He took hold of his chin and wrenched him back, watching intently as Richard unravelled.

MRN: That being as close as I could shove them towards actual wallsex. And it's close enough, because you know they are both thinking about it. I don't know if Richard actually doesn't want Henry to watch him, or if it's a tease. Both, probably.

LLF: He reads to me as profoundly ambivalent. But then, I tend to assume ambivalence in most situations!

MRN: Yeah. He asked for it, he's got it, and he's quite reasonably scared. But, you know, he's also up against a wall, and I have no idea if Henry's using his hand or just plain grinding it out of him, but you know, it's not pretty, but he's not in any mood for pretty. And as previously noted, it's going to HAUNT Henry.

Even when Richard had at last cried out and spasmed against him, even when he slumped gasping and sweating between Henry and the wall, eyes wide and wondering, Henry was stirred not to tenderness but to greed. He was unsatisfied still, and with Richard's resistance banished the undignified struggle had lost its savour; he had never been one to slake himself on a limp, unresisting form, even after battle, if better sport offered. 

MRN: Battlefield rape. Harfleur. I will note that Hal speaks as one with expert knowledge, there.

LLF: Hot and forcing violation, which may in fact be the most horrifying line in Shakespeare.

MRN: I can totally see Henry IV as going after the ones who fight. Cause, you know, him and his need to be able to say they asked for it.

LLF: It is characteristic, yes.

MRN: Yeah. It was important to me to get that in there.

LLF: Yeah. Because it tends to be there, under the surface. It is, as you note, all over the place in _Henry V_ especially. And, hell, in _1H4_ Hal has that line about how because of the rebellion "we shall buy maidenheads as they buy hobnails, by the hundreds."

MRN: Daddy's boy.

LLF: That's about it, yeah.

MRN: Yeah. And also, from a writing perspective, you know, I'm pulling a Richard. Make the reader complicit and then slip them the poison. From a gender perspective, you know, there's all this displaced anxiety in the four plays about being penetrated.

LLF: Oh, absolutely, yes.

MRN: And again, Richard's not afraid of it. I mean, he's afraid of HENRY, right now, but.

LLF: And no -- it's part of his refusal to accept the generally-accepted significances of things.

MRN: Yeah. But Henry is OBSESSED by it. Just THINKING about it.

LLF: It's 'cause he's a total closet case.

MRN: I spent more time than I care to admit to, trying to get them to fuck. But this is better, in the end, because now HENRY WILL ALWAYS WONDER. 

So, you know, he's standing here feeling all triumphant because he...made Richard come. Right. And it's still not enough. It's never going to be enough, but he's never going to realise that, or come to terms with it. Which is another version of Richard's mistake all over again, you know, always chasing more power, or more evidence of power.

LLF: _Evidence_ of power, yes -- insofar as it exists distinctly from power itself. Because, what with the general Foucauldianity of the play, they're really hard to tell apart. Certainly Richard has issues distinguishing them, and so too does Henry.

Richard's legs were still shaking, hardly fit to hold him upright, and the pressure of Henry's hand as it threaded through his hair sufficed to send him to his knees. He expected some token struggle, a protest at least, but Richard only bit his lip and set to unlacing him, slipping his hand beneath his hose and pushing his shirt aside, casting a wide-eyed glance at Henry's face as he took him in hand; a whore's trick, and Henry had no patience for it. 

MRN: And you know, that's filthy too; "ooh, sir, it's so BIG". And Henry's totally falling for it.

No patience, suddenly, for anything; he tugged sharply at Richard's scalp, hard enough to make him wince, and took harsh satisfaction in seeing tears start from his eyes. Richard bent to his business docilely enough then; even when his swollen lip split wide and began to bleed afresh as he stretched his mouth to swallow him he only moaned deep in his throat and redoubled his efforts, and soon he was sitting back on his heels, dragging a sleeve across his bruised mouth as Henry gulped air in great harsh gasps and dropped heavily into the half-forgotten chair.

LLF: And, finally, the overdetermined blowjob.

MRN: The overdetermined blowjob. Well, with two of the King's bodies doing the blowing and two getting blown, it's a bit complex.

LLF: The bit about Richard's lip bleeding, incidentally, always freaks me the fuck out.

MRN: Because Henry is getting off on it, or because Richard sort of is?

LLF: ...yes?

MRN: Or is it freaky because it's actually disturbingly hot?

LLF: Well, that too. As I said, voyage of discovery!

MRN: Right there with you. Part of that's pure colour. You know, it's a visual set up, a bit. Pale face and swollen mouth and red blood. Total, um, what's academic for cunt imagery?

LLF: Erm...yonic? There isn't really a good word.

MRN: Cunt it is. :) There needs to be a word for it. But it works because it's playing up all the phallic imagery all through the play and the anxiety and desire about penetration and here's Richard making that all visual.

It's also -- battlefield rape again. And several other vile things. Playing into Henry's whole kink for violence in the worst way.

That moan is pure transgression. And evil, because really, encouraging that kink in Henry is a vicious thing to do to him.

LLF: Gah, yes. *shivers*

MRN: Richard is out to break him, he really is. He's laying a curse on his whole kingship. In the play and here. Poison in the ear, poison in the mouth...

LLF: He is. Though it's entirely arguable that kingship is cursed anyway -- it's just that, well, to be flippant, this time it's personal ("Keeps Death his court" and so forth).

MRN: Yeah. Richard had to give him the crown, but he's damned if he'll risk him ENJOYING it. And, you know, getting the crown by righteous violence is okay, at least, from Henry's point of view, but this? Poison, poison, poison.

LLF: "I give this heavy weight from off my head,

And this unwieldy scepter from my hand..."

It's the same sort of thing -- "enjoy your albatross, Harry!" Except with sex.

When he had recovered himself a little Henry opened his eyes, grimly pleased to see that though he kept his eyes down and his face calm Richard's breathing was as ragged as his own and his cheek flushed hot as Henry stretched forth a hand to flick some few missed droplets from his chin. He gave no other sign, only ran the back of his hand over his lips a final time and moved in silence to fumble Henry's clothes into some sort of order.

MRN: NOW he's all meek.

LLF: Calculated vulnerability is Richard's stock in trade. That, and overdetermined blowjobs, apparently. 

...I just really like that phrase. Clearly.

MRN: Oh yes. absolutely. Smug little bastard here, licking his lips. Literally. And probably managing to look about 12, just in case Henry has any remaining certainties about his sexuality not yet wrenched into a heap of sharp wires.

LLF: Right. Gah, there went my brain. But, yes. 

Though I remember you remarking on the fact that making Richard blush was sort of a backbrain moment.

MRN: Did I? Hmm yeah. He OUGHT to blush, but somehow I don't think he'd agree. Probably just hates being caught with the evidence on his face. He's a bit catlike, that way.

LLF: Ha! Richard and his display/secrecy issues.

MRN: Oh yes. Look at me look at me don't look at me.

LLF: That's how the dep scene goes, too -- where it's sort of an inversion-except-not-really of Foucault's "privileged visibility" -- Richard staging his own _apparent_ powerlessness. It's different here, certainly, because of the very private context, among other things, but I think you're hitting on a variant of the same tendency.

Henry thought of taking his leave while Richard still crouched helpless on the cold stone floor; proud Richard brought low and discarded as lightly as a harlot taken and grown tedious was a memory he was tempted to keep whole and perfect; even as the thought came to him Richard left his self-appointed task and sat himself at Henry's feet with an oddly contented sigh, and he recoiled from it. 

MRN: You know, Richard's acting and he isn't.

LLF: Again, that's characteristic of him. As Derek Jacobi put it -- "The emotions are genuine, but he can turn it on." That's always stayed with me, because it's so _right._

MRN: Somewhere in there he's got a bit of pity for Henry, even though it's him that did it to him, same as Henry has for him.

LLF: Oh, certainly. I keep thinking of [that image from the Barton production of the two of them looking at each other through the frame of the mirror](http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a293/angevin2/pascorichardson-richardii-a5s5.jpg) \-- which is another one of those moments of unsettling understanding.

MRN: Yes. And he's got stuff to say before he dies, and he wants a witness. And Henry will understand. Eventually, if not now. Nobody else will.

LLF: YES. Because they're inextricably linked now.

MRN: Always were really.

This was sin and madness and ruin, but it was respite, too -- beyond the door to this stark chamber lay a life of endless, small compromises and deceptions, the endless business of balancing the burden he had taken from Richard's hands. Richard, once so enamoured of ceremony and pretty deceits, dealt now only in plain deeds and bitter truths, and if he left one stung and raw, it was the rawness of a winter morning, and oddly welcome; there would be gilded words enough for any man, in the years to come ... as if he had spoken his thoughts aloud, Richard sighed again and glanced up at him ruefully.

MRN: *stares at that* Role swap. Though of course, Richard's hardly been as open as Henry thinks he was.

LLF: I cannot remember who it was that said that the major theme of Pimlott's production was kingship as solitary confinement.

MRN: Mmmm. and that's true too; this is the only moment it's not. And as previously referenced, it's only possible because Richard ... is dead.

LLF: Yeah. See, I can't shut up about performance history -- it's the same sort of thing that gets you things like in the Barton production where the groom is a disguised Bolingbroke. As is mentioned in the notes.

MRN: Well, performance history is what drives this fuc a lot, so.

Fic. God, what a typo :)

LLF: I was going to say!

MRN: Different kind of performance history driving the fuck.

LLF: The "Save It For Your Horse" section of Oedipus Tex (aka, "The Dauphin Theme Song") is a really disturbing soundtrack for this conversation, too. And yet I bear a burden like an ass...et cetera.

MRN: Uh yeah. *is disturbed*

"It is so strange, cousin, to have outrun the worst -- I fear nothing now, strive for nothing, dream of nothing -- all the threads of my fate unravelled, and here -- here I am, after all, King Richard no more, yet for some little time Richard still, with Richard's face and heart and -- vices, all intact."17MRN: My God. A remark by Richard that mostly means what it says. I must have been slipping. :)

LLF: I love the pause before "vices." You can just see him smirking balefully as he says it.

MRN: Is he? I always thought he was denying that they were. Both, either.

LLF: Well, those are not mutually contradictory! And again, though I think this is in the notes, a cool bit of carryover from the dep scene.

_For some little time..._ Richard scarcely seemed to mark what he said, but Henry's heart twisted within him, and he began to stammer out some demurral -- he had not meant, had never wished, would not permit -- Richard cut it short with a shrug, and gathered himself to rise, ignoring Henry's small sound of protest. In a moment he was on his feet again, backing away with his old sardonic grace.

MRN: Henry being a coward again. And Richard makes him pay for it.

LLF: Yeah. Because he's still refusing to acknowledge How Things Are. And I love that Richard basically says "okay, sod off now."

MRN: Yep. Rolls off and goes to sleep. Which is hell, when Henry's half thinking he ought to apologise. And now he's feeling like that mouse crawling up an elephant's leg with rape on its mind.

LLF: Right, now I really need a drink.

MRN: I mean, HE is just shattered. And Richard's just... meh. That was ok.

LLF: Yeah. This whole section totally makes me wince. In the good way, mind you.

MRN: God, me too. But so does a lot of what he says to Henry in the play. Richard is just surgically vicious.

"If your Majesty has no more need of me?" His eyes were clear as dawn, and as cold. "The guards are discreet -- to a point. As you have cause enough to know, that cut off two lives for what they had of Richard's love."

LLF: And Richard For The Win.

MRN: [nellgwynn] BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITCH [/nellgwynn] Mind, it's a fair cop.

LLF: It is! That's why it stings so much!

Theirs had never been a lasting peace, and Henry knew even as he nodded heavily and rose, inspecting his person for signs of what had passed, that this strange moment had been the last; he had neither the wit nor the heart for more of this. Finding his garments innocent enough, he turned away, pausing at the door for a final glance at Richard, already ensconced once more in his window.

"I thank you for the wine, cousin, and for the courtesy of your visit. Should you be minded to come again, sure I will be found at your Majesty's disposal."

MRN: 'Disposal' is not accidental there.

LLF: Ah, I didn't catch that one. Nicely done. It's like, he's going to be upfront about it because Henry won't...

MRN: You know, Henry, most necrophiliacs kill them first and fuck them after.

LLF: Well, I'm sure someone has done a production where they went the usual way round! There was that one with the waterlogged rolling about onstage. It's in the Evil Shakespeare Overlord List.

MRN: Henry does not like knowing he's willing to kill Richard. And he does not like knowing he'd never have done all this if he hadn't already decided to kill him.

LLF: Necrophilia for deconstructionists. After all, we have had deconstructionist S&M...

Henry searched for words; found none, and stood irresolute with his hand on the latch until Richard turned his face away.

MRN: After all that, Richard dismisses Henry.

LLF: He's the king to the very end.

MRN: And Henry will NEVER figure out HOW.

LLF: Yeah. I can't remember if I was talking about this earlier and if it's actually in the commentary -- he's got the force but he doesn't have the...signifiers, I guess, or the symbolism. And if they aren't everything (as Richard's fate demonstrates) they count for a lot.

MRN: He has the force, but he can't get the leverage.

LLF: This, too, I guess, is why Henry often doesn't get to actually wear the crown in productions of the tetralogy -- this is the case in both the Beeb and ESC productions.

MRN: GOOD one.

LLF: And of course he's all clingy with it by the end and has to have it on his pillow when he sleeps. (In the Chicago production it was indicated that this was his usual custom). And everything gets tied up in it. As it does.

MRN: If I wanted to be really sick, that doesn't prove he thinks of it as his. if he still thinks of it as Richard's, that's really very wrong.

LLF: Waaaaaay ahead of you there!

* * *

Isabel he sent home to France, and wished her well -- wished, even, that she might someday be loved as she had loved her Richard.18 Carlisle he spared gladly, honest tribute to honest courage;19MRN: Nobody is to tell Carlisle he was saved partly by a blowjob.

LLF: *falls out of chair giggling*

Rutland20 he spared for pity, and perhaps, a little, because Richard loved him. 

MRN: Interesting that it's only Carlisle that Richard intercedes for in this fic. He knows Rutland rather well. I think.

LLF: I am always plagued by the image of Rutland with a sign reading "Will Give Blowjobs for Courtly Preferment."

MRN: Well, Richard ought to know.

LLF: In the biblical sense. 

Historically, btw, there were a few people Richard interceded for -- I know Carlisle was one of them, but I forget who else. Some of the people who later got involved in the Epiphany plot, mostly. Rutland, though, is his father's son, rather like Prince Hal, ultimately. That is, he and York both end up going where the power is, however conflictedly.

Richard himself -- there had never been, he knew, had known even as he cursed Exton, any real chance that it might be otherwise; alive, Richard would have gnawed away at the roots of England's peace,21 would have been forever the centre of plots and unrest. The thing was impossible; to allow a land to bear two living Kings was to crown chaos and death.22MRN: Yeah, what Richard said.

LLF: Pretty much, yeah!

MRN: Henry's rare flashes of quasi-self-awareness again.

LLF: Yeah. It's like, now that it's done, and he doesn't have to face doing it, he can admit it.

It had nothing to do with -- anything else, he told himself firmly, even as he wept over the pale, battered thing that had been Richard, that had banished him and been defeated by him, mocked him and submitted to him and seduced him and withstood him to the end. It was necessary, what they had done, 

MRN: _Quasi_ -self-awareness. Also, ambiguity of "what they had done".

LLF: Well, yes. Although the bit about him weeping over the body gets to me in a sort of fucked-up way. You know, the televised version of the Shaw production ends with just that image?

MRN: Easy to weep over the body, once it's done. Henry's innocent again. But the worm's there. And they always manage to catch that in production, but never quite perfectly.

and plain sense, if regrettable, that Exton be banished for it; a man who could turn his hand to such a deed was like a mad dog that chanced to maul a thief; useful, perhaps, but too dangerous to keep. Still -- even Northumberland conceded that it was as well to make a show of pity -- he gave orders that Richard -- that Richard's corpse -- was not to hang with the others, that it was to be shown to the people, as it must be, but as soon as possible interred with decency, that sooner to pass into forgetfulness. Cold policy, not hot shame, had driven him; there was an end to it.

LLF: That's what they ALL SAY.

MRN: Yep.

You know, there's a particular horror in the thought of a body you've been intimate with being violated or mutilated. And I wanted to just brush over it enough for a shiver here. And Northumberland is ... if Northumberland knew what was going on here he'd shove him into hanging it up and watching it rot.

LLF: He would, yes. Prick that he is.

MRN: Both because N is a bastard, and to sicken Henry on it all.

LLF: *is much with the hating of Northumberland*

MRN: Oh, I was thinking of Hotspur's corpse here too.

LLF: Which Henry IV had exhumed not long after he was buried, and displayed in Shrewsbury before having him posthumously beheaded and quartered.

MRN: Yes. So I gave him another motive.

LLF: One of my marginal notes in Hayward is something like "You know, Henry IV just leaves mangled corpses wherever he goes, doesn't he?"

MRN: Yes. And yet, not Richard.

LLF: Well, Richard is -- was, whatever -- still the king. On some level.

MRN: That too. yeah.

By day, he could credit it; could even persuade himself that what had passed between them at that final meeting had been some slight, passing madness, some infection of the imagination shaken off with the coming of day. 

MRN: "Infection of the imagination" is, by the way, a Lois Bujold phrase. About, oddly enough, battlefield rape. I steal from the best. It fits with the whole disease theme.

LLF: Oh really? It sounds very medieval-Catholic. It also reminds me of Sidney's line about "infected will" -- which basically alludes to original sin, as I recall. And _Will_ is such a loaded word in Shakespeare. Even when he isn't punning on his name.

It was only when he slept that Richard came to give him the lie, and of what passed in dreams, King Henry never spoke.

LLF: That last line is so very creepy. Also, it's very striking that the narrative voice only styles him as King Henry once and it's at this point.

MRN: Yeah. Well, Richard is dead. Long live King Henry. But not too long. And not too well.

LLF: And then comes the insomnia! And the leprosy!

NOTES

Because we are Serious Scholars, and are therefore compelled to wear our methodology on our sleeves for fans to peck at. All quotations from Shakespeare refer to the Riverside edition.

1\. **The King never stands before his subjects** Equalizing seating arrangements also play a role in Richard II's most famous moment of crisis: "For God's sake let us sit upon the ground / And tell sad stories of the death of kings..." (3.2.156ff.)

LLF: And of course, half the time in production they _do_ sit and I hate that.

MRN: The feetnote here are like the dancing in the Globe production.

LLF: They are! Well, I don't feel they're as awesome as the Globe dancing, but yes.

MRN: It's about the psychological release, especially 16. :)

2\. **relieving me of all my cares** Cf. Bolingbroke's insistence at 4.1.194: "Part of your cares you give me with your crown."

3\. **I had remembered myself** Recalling 3.2.83: "I had forgot myself; am I not king?"

4\. **determined to nurture Northumberland at your breast** A reference, one hopes, to the fable of the peasant who warms a poisonous snake in his bosom and is rewarded for his labor with a deadly sting; the alternative is too disturbing to think on even in this fic. Shakespearean warrant is granted to the former interpretation by Richard's condemnation of his favorites as "Snakes, in my heart-blood warmed, that sting my heart" (3.2.131). However, Charles Forker's commentary on the play in the most recent Arden edition elides the difference: "R[ichard] P[roudfoot] adds 'Vipers are also, as their etymology reveals, ovo-viviparous (hatching eggs inside the mother's body and so giving birth to living offspring), and could be imagined as gnawing their way out of the mother (cf. _1H6_ 3.1.72-3, _Per_ 1.1.64-5).'"

LLF: And still more creepy childbearing-type imagery. Involving snakes. And breastfeeding Northumberland, and I know this is about the third time I've mentioned it, but EW. As noted, I am much with the hating of Northumberland.

5\. **as if listening to music** An echo of 5.5.41-65, and perhaps a glance at the significance of that reference.

LLF: 5.5.41-65 is the prison soliloquy - the second part of it, anyway, after he hears the music. Actually, looking at my Riverside again, it should be 41-66: from "music do I hear?" to "And love to Richard / Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world," which is one of those lines that resonates very deeply with me. Of course there's something ironic about the reminder of it here...

MRN *cackles gleefully* I so meant to do that.

6\. **and mine own voice** While the reference, on the surface of it, is to his surrender of the crown, the articles of deposition as given by Holinshed offer an intriguing second layer to this statement: "He most tyrannously and unprincely said that the lives and goods of all his subjects were in his hands, and at his disposition" (3.503). Richard's view of kingship remains consistent even when he's no longer on the throne.

LLF: Hence, of course, all of his disturbing wrong-yet-right counsel to Henry. If I'd thought to do it, I'd have quoted Nigel Saul's line from his biography of Richard (which is very good; I recommend it) where he talks about this conflict between autocratic distance and intimacy that was characteristic of Richard's reign. And now my copy of Saul is under a big pile of books and I don't feel like digging it out because I am a lazy twerp. And of course Richard in this fic, whenever he talks about kingship, really emphasizes that distance, but Henry does have a point when he implies that Richard tends toward the overfamiliar, though he does so in a way that, at that moment, is profoundly stupid.

7\. **Richard and all he has to give are yours** An echo of 3.3.197: "Your own is yours, and I am yours, and all.

LLF: And the way Sam West says this in the Beeb production...it is one of those moments that _should not be hot_ but is anyway, probably _because_ it shouldn't.

MRN: It is. You could say it was the seminal moment for this fic's creation. It is terrifyingly hot, as if he were seducing Bolingbroke in front of everyone, and B as played by Damian Lewis really reacts that way.

LLF: Because he _is_ seducing Bolingbroke in front of everyone.

MRN: He's calling him out on what B really wants, which is to possess Richard and have power over him.

8\. **This time. . .knotted in his throat** The imagery of bloodied hands, and the symbolic washing thereof, is a significant motif in the play. Bolingbroke invokes it twice; the first of these occurs when he condemns Bushy and Greene: "yet to wash your blood / From off my hands, here in the view of men / I will unfold some causes of your deaths" (3.1.5-7). This event and its possible motivations proves significant, of course, to the present narrative.

LLF: Cf. previous comments about courtiers' arses, Bushy and Greene, and wanking.

The motif recurs at the end of the play when he vows to "make a voyage to the Holy Land / To wash this blood off from my guilty hand" (5.6.49-50). During the deposition scene Richard underscores the inherent problem with this kind of disavowal when he accuses those spectators who "with Pilate wash your hands, / Showing an outward pity" (4.1.239-40). Richard's gesture here thus simultaneously enacts and undoes Henry's desire to unbloody his hands, both literally and in its challenge to the boundaries of the normatively masculine preserves of political and military power; Henry's unwillingly pleasurable response to it indicates the success of the subversion.

LLF: I always enjoy getting to use the word "normative" and its cognates.

9\. **capacity for voluptuousness and perversity** Holinshed (3.508) gives a contemporary estimate of Richard's bad behavior: "Furthermore, there reigned abundantly the filthy sin of lechery and fornication, with abominable adultery, specially in the king, but most chiefly in the prelacy, whereby the whole realm by such their evil example was so infected."

LLF: Invariably, any critical edition of _Richard II_ will include a lengthy footnote on the "broke the possession of a royal bed" line that cites this passage and rather anxiously asserts that, while Shakespeare seems to be thinking of it, Bolingbroke's accusation against the favorites is not corroborated by anything else in the play, and anyway, the Holinshed passage isn't all that specific about homoeroticism. I invariably want to beat these people about the ears with a copy of _Sodometries_ or Madhavi Menon's article about metonymy and sexual transgression as expressed through the language of the garden scene.

MRN: Or toss it at their balls. 

And how come nobody ever then talks about what that says about HENRY?

LLF: Yeah. I was going to remark on "toss it at their balls" but -- I haven't actually got a copy of this play edited by a woman, and I don't think there's ever been a major edition with a female editor. So I guess it's a perfectly valid locution.

MRN: It's Henry saying it. Isabel doesn't seem to have any complaints.

LLF: Yeah. And of course it's Henry who breaks up the marriage.

MRN: Yes, yes it is.

LLF: It gets made explicit, even -- "bad men, you violate a twofold marriage."

10\. **as readily as any hound** For references to dogs as political barometers, cf. 3.2.130:

LLF: The phrase "dogs as political barometers" makes me unreasonably happy.

"Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man!" and the anecdote from Froissart which may have been in the back of Shakespeare's mind when he composed that line (and perhaps, as many critics suggest, the dialogue about roan Barbary at 5.5.72-94): "King Richard had a greyhound called Mathe,

LLF: Every time I read this, I always sort of wonder if the rest of the hounds had names like "Hystorie" and "Physicks" and "Englysshe Litte."

who always waited upon the king, and would know no man else: for whensoever the king did ride, he that kept the greyhound did let him loose, and he would straight run to the king and fawn upon him, and leap with his forefeet upon the king's shoulders. And as the king and the Earl of Derby talked together in the court [at Flint Castle], the greyhound, who was wont to leap upon the king, left the king and came to the Earl of Derby, Duke of Lancaster, and made to him the same friendly countenance and cheer as he was wont to do to the king. The duke, who knew not the greyhound, demanded of the king what the greyhound would do. 'Cousin,' quod the king, 'it is a great good token to you, and an evil sign to me.' 'Sire, how know you that?' quod the duke. 'I know it well,' quod the king: 'the greyhound maketh you cheer this day as king of England, as ye shall be, and I shall be deposed: the greyhound hath this knowledge naturally; therefore take him to you; he will follow you and forsake me.' The duke understood well these words, and cherished the greyhound, who would never after follow King Richard, but followed the duke of Lancaster" (Froissart, _Chronicles_ 6.369, trans. Sir John Bourchier).

11\. The people responsible for this footnote have been deposed.

LLF: This originally went with the line to the effect that Richard is playing Henry as easily as he might a psaltery, and remarked on just how easy it is to play the psaltery. This was before I realized that the bowed psaltery, which is indeed very easy to play, is a modern instrument, and I've never played a plucked psaltery, which is the kind that would have been current in the fourteenth century, and thus have no idea whether it's easy to play or not, which left me with nothing interesting to say in the footnote. So out it went. We didn't want to renumber, because we are indolent, and anyway by the time I got to this Footnote 16 had already acquired a certain kind of mystique and we didn't want to muck about with that.

Perhaps we ought to have just made it a citole or something instead, but I have no idea how to play a citole.

Not long after this story went up, I took up the bowed psaltery (I'd wanted one for years, and researching to find an instrument to reference in that line reminded me, and Lark in the Morning had one on sale). It is in fact easier to play than a repressed usurper, although my first attempts at achieving any kind of fluency with it made me think that we'd given Richard insufficient credit as a seducer -- or a musician! The psaltery, though, really is easier to play. But much harder to tune. Don't ask me how I know that.

MRN: It's the tuning that really exercises Richard, yes.

12\. **De Vere** Notorious royal favorite Robert de Vere (1362-92), Earl of Oxford and Duke of Ireland, and a significant influence on Richard during the early years of the reign; chroniclers of the period often insinuate (and more often than not state outright) that they were knocking excessively pointy boots.

LLF: The Elizabethan Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, is his first cousin five times removed. ([Here](http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a293/angevin2/knowyourdeveres.png) is the family tree I had to draw to figure that out.) Edward is descended from Robert de Vere's uncle Aubrey, who inherited the earldom of Oxford upon the death of his nephew in 1392. Edward is slightly more notorious (even though Robert was pretty notorious), but much less sexy.

Shakespeare of course makes no reference to him, but his widow makes an appearance in the anonymous play _Thomas of Woodstock,_ where she remarks: "My husband Ireland, that unloving lord -- / God pardon his amiss, he now is dead -- / King Richard was the cause he left my bed" (2.3.10-12).

LLF: _Woodstock_ doesn't exactly have _more_ homoeroticism than Shakespeare's play. It's just much, much more obvious about it and considerably more camp. It is clear that Richard's opponents, in Shakespeare's play, have all read it, because the sort of power dynamic they fixate on isn't what's going on in Shakespeare at all; it's much more like the situation in _Woodstock._

13\. **to wonder what it was** Henry's confusion underscores the status of sodomy as something unspeakable, or, in the oft-rehearsed words of Elizabethan jurist Sir Edward Coke, "a crime among Christians not to be named." Coke goes on to define this action, or category of actions, as " _crimen laesae majestatis,_ a sin horrible committed against the king: and this is either against the king celestial or terrestrial." As Jonathan Goldberg has extrapolated in his work on homoeroticism in Renaissance English literature, sodomy is therefore what results when same-sex desire and social and/or political disruption intersect. As, of course, they do here, in the most literal fashion.

14\. **it was a good deal closer to battle** Cf. _Henry V_ 5.2.224-27: "Now beshrew my father's ambition! He was thinking of civil wars when he got me; therefore was I created with a stubborn outside, with an aspect of iron..." The younger Henry shows himself to be alarmingly, even disgustingly, perceptive.

LLF: Really, by this point, it's one of the grossest lines in all of _Henry V._ Which has some outstandingly gross lines. Eric Partridge called it "the obscenest of the histories."

MRN: I will never hear it again without cringing.

On that note, the author and editor would like to express great sympathy towards Henry IV's wife, Mary de Bohun, Countess of Derby.

LLF: And, really, I think this bears reiteration.

MRN: This cannot be said too often. God help her, because nobody else seems to have.

15\. **I come but for mine own** 3.3.196.

16\. **Richard had thrust. . .let him learn to value it** Henry's unnervingly disciplinarian attitude here evokes Foucault's discussion of punishment, in pre-modern society, as a restoration of the royal body. Foucault's reading of Kantorowicz's seminal treatment of _The King's Two Bodies_ juxtaposes the body of the king and that of the condemned man, who "gives rise to his own ceremonial and...calls forth a whole theoretical discourse, not in order to ground the 'surplus power' possessed by the person of the sovereign, but in order to code the 'lack of power' with which those subjected to punishment are marked. In the darkest region of the political field the condemned man represents the symmetrical, inverted figure of the king" ( _Discipline and Punish,_ 29). Of course, the power dynamics in this situation problematize such a reading considerably, as Henry's attempt to enact a putatively royal power displays far less agency on his part than he believes himself to have.

LLF: This is a really, really Foucauldian fic -- I didn't even elaborate on this in the notes as much as I might have. This is largely because my relationship to Foucault becomes more vexed as I do more scholarly work. But the whole thing that Richard and Henry get onto about what being a king _really means_ and what it feels like is very much influenced by Foucault, since Foucault has that whole emphasis on power, in early modern contexts, being tied to the visible. (This is one of the concepts I find frequently vexing.)

MRN: And here we're looking at the hidden. Which problematises it more. Their only witnesses are each other.

LLF: Yeah. Is it power if you can't see it?

MRN: And Henry feels very hidden, here. But he forgets that he's his own witness.

A useful gloss may be provided by Samuel West, who played the title role in Stephen Pimlott's 2000 RSC production of _Richard II,_ and who is speaking here in less literal terms than this narrative presents: "What crystallized this movement and made it active was the realization that in giving in, like all good 'Sub-Dom' relationships, the submissive is taking charge. By saying 'you can't sack me, I resign,' Richard regains the moral high ground, and willingly looks forward to handing over a crown which only he knows is poisoned" ( _Players of Shakespeare 6,_ 95). While there is of couse nothing good whatsoever about this relationship, West's reading nevertheless encapsulates the interaction of these antagonists remarkably well, and indeed, was highly influential in the germination of this story. This is because the author and editor would _totally_ depose him.

LLF: This is where this footnote originally ended. It sort of snowballed from there, possibly because we were punchy from line-editing. It wasn't even 2 AM when you'd expect this sort of thing.

MRN: And it's the most wonderfully subversive part of the fic, in a way. Excuse us while we break the fourth wall. Possibly by lining up half the RSC, past and present, and shagging them against it. 

As noted above, there's all this sexual anxiety in this play.

LLF: Yeah. And the squee was really a relief.

MRN: Yes. As I said it's like at the Globe when Richard and Henry (Liam Brennan and Mark Rylance) come out and dance together.

LLF: Yeah. I love that bit so much -- just thinking about it now I'm grinning rather foolishly!

MRN: But it's also, you know, rejecting that privileged position above it all as theorists.

LLF: I have always been a firm believer in the notion that it is completely appropriate for academics to squee.

MRN: "Richard II, c'est moi".

LLF: Oh, I have stories about THAT.

MRN: The anxiety about the dispassion of academic writers on sexuality is very... it's not the same thing exactly, but it's not so very different. And I'm totally willing to break that wall and say you know, this academic exercise is a piece of smut. This smut is an academic exercise. 

So footnote 16 is all about breaking the wall. And kind of staking out that ground. And it's absolutely silly, but you know, that's the point. So yeah, for me this is another piece of poking at that incredible anxiety about who's taking it. Poking fun at it, even, and sort of ... you know, performance is important to this fic, and that's partly because actors and directors get right down in the muck.

LLF: Yeah. I think this is because -- well, because, as I said earlier, the textual standards are different, because theater goes for a very different response. Assuming you're not doing Brecht or something. I mean, having acted as well as being an almost-professional critic, you use completely different sets of interpretive muscles. (It is, of course, a Good Thing to use both of them.)

MRN: I sort of position fanfic as vulnerable critique.

"I think what we are seeing are efforts to map an intermediate space we can't quite define yet, a borderland betwen passion and intellect, analysis and subjectivity, ethnography and autobiography, art and life ... [t]he anxiety around such work is that it will prove to be beyond criticism, that it will be undiscussable. But the real problem is that we need other forms of criticism, which are rigorous yet not disinterested; forms of criticism which are not immune to catharsis; forms of criticism which can respond vulnerably..." -- Ruth Behar, Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart, in The Vulnerable Observer.

And really, acting is VC itself. It's all very reflexive.

LLF: Yeah, it is. Try telling that to undergrads in Intro Shakespeare, but it is.

MRN: Oh god. There needs to be a Sam quote. :)

"I was always slightly scared of my body. I never used to dance at school discos, I was too embarrassed. I still don't consider myself a physically very fluent person. When I was in my early 20s I was involved in the experimental theatre club at Oxford University and we used to work with companies whose work was often very physically based. They weren't afraid of making a complete tit of themselves in public, whereas I was, extremely. I still am. 

Self-consciousness is a cancer for an actor - your job is to get into the shoes of people, not to watch yourself from the outside. ... In Hamlet, there are several points where you might decide to be naked and it helps if you're happy enough with your body to do that - which, of course, shouldn't be a problem. You should be thinking 'Fuck it, I don't care what you think.' Ultimately, that's where I'd like to get to."

MRN: And you know, that absolutely fuels the work, that consciousness of vulnerability, especially in a play like this. And footnote 16 is about that, in some ways. And about being playful as part of that, just finally saying ok, fuckit and letting all the layers go where they want for a bit and then coming back to see what you're got.

LLF: Oh, certainly.

Equally influential was the performance of his costar in the 2000 BBC Radio version, Damian Lewis. We'd depose him too. Or watch Jamie Bamber do it.

LLF: Jamie Bamber played Hotspur in the same production. One got the strong impression that he had a great big fanboy crush on Bolingbroke. (He has kind of a complex about the house of Lancaster, because he very obviously also has a Thing about Prince Hal.) "And even as I was then is Percy now," indeed! Of course, if Bolingbroke is Damian Lewis, one can hardly blame him. Certainly Damian's much more crushable than the guy who played Bolingbroke in the other production I saw where they did this (a ghastly direct-to-video version starring, rather improbably, David Birney).

We wouldn't feel right about deposing Jamie Bamber, though, as he is too Tender Raw and Young. But we'd sell him our souls. Cheap. At least, the author would. The editor would like to keep her soul. Also, we'd like to know what Liam Brennan (who the author, the editor and the author's husband would all depose, in a New Yorkist Minute) as Henry IV was about when he JUST UP AND PLANTED ONE ON MARK RYLANCE. Whom the editor would also gladly depose, as she has seen very few actors in the role of Richard II whom she would not depose.

LLF: I said this before I'd actually seen the Globe _Richard II._ Having seen it, I would not depose Rylance's Richard II because he plays him as very childlike and this makes him profoundly unsexy, of course, but I would _totally_ depose him in other contexts, because he is entirely adorable in an age-appropriate way, even if he is weird. 

The Globe production, incidentally, really de-emphasizes the sexual anxiety, which makes the snoggage that follows the deposition scene really weird, but not ineffective. It's oddly innocent, as...involved as it is.

MRN: YES. It's like all the sexual anxiety suddenly... oh, look, instant puberty. Because Richard's dying and so suddenly he's no longer childlike.

She's easy that way. Unless you're David Birney, in which case, bugger off. The author, on the other hand, would like to blame Sam West for causing her to have disturbing but amazingly hot fantasies about Agincourt on the bus to North Bay. The author would not depose Mark Rylance or Derek Jacobi, but the editor would.

LLF: You know, I forgot to mention this before, but I would also totally depose Jon Finch (who played Bolingbroke to Derek Jacobi's Richard II). I mean, he is a man who manages to make leprosy compelling.

Nobody's ever going to take me seriously again after they read this, will they?

We'd both depose Gielgud. Olivier, maybe, if it were Henry V!Olivier with eyeliner on.

LLF: Everyone thinks I'm weird when I say this. What? Olivier is totally hot with eyeliner on.

MRN: He is HOT LIKE BURNING with eyeliner on.

LLF: I knew you'd back me up on this one!

MRN: I'd back HIM up. *leers*

The author would also totally depose Fiona Shaw. The editor, though not generally inclined that way, would at least consider it.

LLF: I may have serious interpretive quibbles with her Richard II but I still think it's beyond awesome that she did it.

Both the author and the editor would happily stand in the rain for several hours for a chance of deposing Ian McKellen were it not for the fact that Sir Ian McKellen, like the Mother Superior, does not go in for that sort of thing.

Including the deposing of the Majestic Garrick. A Garrick once Bit my Monarch.

LLF: James Goodhall's adaptation of _Richard II,_ mentioned at the very start of the commentary, was written for Garrick. He decided not to perform it, opting for the original text, which mystified Goodhall, who was of the sad and misguided opinion that the original text sucks. I think he just didn't want to do all the poorly-written overtly homoerotic stuff Goodhall put into it.

**We apologise for the fault in the footnote. Those responsible for deposing the people who have just been deposed, have been deposed.**

MRN: "I'd depose him" has become one of those phrases we will never shake off. It just sounds so damned filthy.

LLF: It IS filthy!

MRN: "Depose" as a euphemism has an undertone of slightly sadistic twistedness. Which I for one am not going to even try to disclaim. Part of that voyage of discovery thing, I think.

Ex King Bites Kan Be Pretty Nasty.

LLF: We felt justified in doing this on the grounds that the _Holy Grail_ DVD contains subtitles for People Who Don't Like the Film, taken from _2 Henry IV._ And, you know, because there is no situation in which Python jokes are out of place.

_And in conclusion? Cousins. Totally cousins._

LLF: Well, it was _right there._

17\. **Richard's face and heart and -- vices** Cf. 4.1.276ff., especially: "Hath sorrow struck / So many blows upon this face of mine / And made no deeper wounds?"

18\. **that she might someday be loved** Isabel's second marriage was to Charles d'Orleans, who appears as a character in _Henry V._

LLF: Where it's pretty obvious that he's having it off with the Constable. Just saying.

The marriage seems to have been happy but was sadly brief; she died in childbirth in 1409.

LLF: At the age of about 19. Gah.

19\. **an honest tribute to honest courage** Cf. 5.6.28-29: "For though mine enemy thou hast ever been, / High sparks of honor in thee have I seen."

20\. **Rutland** More familiar to readers as the erstwhile duke of Aumerle; he was stripped of that title following the accession of Henry IV.

LLF: I think it is safe to assume that those of you reading this can make all the rude puns on your own?

21\. **the roots of England's peace** Imagery of plants is, of course, a significant motif in Shakespeare's histories; the implicit pun is on the royal family's surname of _Plantagenet._

LLF: The punning is probably more obvious in the first tetralogy, probably because there are more people running about who actually use that surname. (Someone actually says "I'll plant Plantagenet" at one point. Warwick, I think. It's the kind of thing he'd say.)

This motif is perhaps most prominent of all in _Richard II_ ; see especially 3.4 _passim,_ and at the end of the play, Henry's regret "that blood should sprinkle me to make me grow" (5.6.46). In _1 Henry IV_ Henry opens the play insisting that "No more the thirsty entrance of this soil / Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood" (1.1.5-6) -- which may also lie behind the repeated references in this story to Richard's bloody lip.

LLF: And another one (i.e. the _1H4_ line) to add to the file of "Lines that Are Now Unspeakably Disgusting." Not that it's not pretty horrible anyway.

22\. **to crown chaos and death** John Barton's 1973 RSC production of _Richard II,_ in which Richard Pasco and Ian Richardson alternated in the roles of Richard and Bolingbroke, ended with the cast leaving the stage, except for the two leads, who bowed to a crowned, robed figure which was then revealed to be the figure of Death. Barton, fond of literalizing the play's imagery, no doubt took his cue from 3.2.160-62: "For within the hollow crown / That rounds the mortal temples of a king / Keeps Death his court..." (Perhaps also pertinent is that in this production the groom who visits Richard in prison was revealed to be a disguised Bolingbroke, though in that case, frottage did not ensue.)

LLF: I've finally managed to hear a bit of it, thanks to an RSC compilation CD. I'd depose Richard Pasco. Even if he is weird-looking. I would really like to have seen, though, how the whole production played out, even though it actually happened six years before I was even born. There has been a lot written about it, so I feel safe in saying that the emphasis of the production was that both Richard and Bolingbroke are very much at the mercy of The System -- that is, that either would have done as the other man did, in his place. In other words, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." I do not really like this interpretation -- or rather, I think it carries that "opposite yet alike" thing that Richard and Bolingbroke do have going (which I keep babbling about in this commentary, and most of the time, really) to an extreme I'm not sure the text warrants.

Also it is sort of perversely amusing that the last words of this fic are technically "frottage did not ensue." I may have to end all my lj entries that way.


End file.
